The Very Essence of Intuition and Insight

An article comparing the innovative styles of Google and Apple appeared in the New York Times in 2012. According to this article, Google uses a “bottom-up approach”. They collect and analyze huge amounts of data from search, their advertising marketplace, email, and other services and then use this data to innovate their systems.

In contrast, Apple uses a more edited, intuitive, and top-down method. When asked what market research went into the company’s product designs, Steve Jobs answered, “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”

Intuition and insight; these two factors have been noted by scholars as core human skills that cannot be duplicated by artificial intelligence. Machines can replicate human skills such as deduction, calculation, and logic, but cannot achieve intuition or insight.

The prefix “in” that precedes both “intuition” and “insight” means “inner”, but the direction of each is quite different. While insight entails examining collected information to draw conclusions, intuition is the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reasoning. Insight therefore uses inductive reasoning, while intuition involves deductive methods instead. In the example at the beginning of this article, Apple uses intuition while Google uses insight.

The greater of these two skills is intuition, as Albert Einstein said. “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” “I believe in intuitions and inspirations… I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am.”

What if someone has both intuition and insight at the same time? That person might understand a human essence unknown to ordinary people. Could that person really exist outside of legends like that of the goddess Athena? After all, even Google and Apple each use only one of these two skills.

Suh Yoon has both insight and intuition. She has examined the lives of over 100,000 individuals to gain insight into the secret to good fortune and intuitively understands the principles of humanity and the world. Her fusion of intuition and insight is reminiscent of the Eastern concept of yin and yang (seemingly opposite or contrary forces combine in harmony into a mutual whole).

This is another reason why Suh Yoon’s solutions are more novel and pragmatic than anyone else’s advice. Wise men tell us to adapt to reality and only master our minds. Scholars synthesize empirical cases to draw conclusions, but cannot come up with truly eye-opening insights.

In contrast, Suh Yoon sees a bird’s-eye view of the world (intuition) and can suggest the most realistic method to achieve whatever a person wants (insight). That’s how the people she’s met have learned the principles of good fortune and multiplied their assets dozens of times over, escaped bankruptcy crises, and seized opportunities that hung by a single thread.

We are so lucky to be able to hear the advice of Suh Yoon regardless of time or place in this age!